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Topic: The most wanted feature? (Read 217368 times)

No ingratitude perceived! Just wanted to give a pretty detailed answer to some of the points, and they were from a mix of posts and people. Even that fairly long answer isn't the full story; as noted, the range of factors that have to be taken into consideration in deciding what is being worked on next is very complex, and we always do our best to try and balance between all of that. Requested features is indeed a big part of it, but there's a whole mix of other stuff too - and we'll keep doing the best we can, and see where we can do better, and of course always be making Corona better as we go :)

Thank you Tom for long answer. I wanted to answer few times, but I every time I deleted my post because it was too impolite.

I will just say that everyone is entitled to their opinion. However you must realize, that even features "that should have been already done" or "are not implemented entirely from scratch" or "are just optimizations that I expect to get for free with every release" nonetheless still take time to develop, test, and debug. If you decide that something adds 0 value just because it falls to one of these categories, then that is your opinion and you are entitled to it (and I am entitled to not take it into account).

This is why we are forcing you to choose between optimizations and new features - optimizing something takes time, same as implementing something new. This is just a fact of life. Also lot of decisions we take are based on feedback outside of forum. For example during the last tour in London, I got almost no requests for faster rendering, but most people want better performance in huge scenes (RAM, startup and shutdown times), so that is going to be optimization focus in v4. Only fraction of our users post here. In fact, many of the biggest powerusers simply do not have time to post here.

Thank you Tom for long answer. I wanted to answer few times, but I every time I deleted my post because it was too impolite.

I will just say that everyone is entitled to their opinion. However you must realize, that even features "that should have been already done" or "are not implemented entirely from scratch" or "are just optimizations that I expect to get for free with every release" nonetheless still take time to develop, test, and debug. If you decide that something adds 0 value just because it falls to one of these categories, then that is your opinion and you are entitled to it (and I am entitled to not take it into account).

This is why we are forcing you to choose between optimizations and new features - optimizing something takes time, same as implementing something new. This is just a fact of life. Also lot of decisions we take are based on feedback outside of forum. For example during the last tour in London, I got almost no requests for faster rendering, but most people want better performance in huge scenes (RAM, startup and shutdown times), so that is going to be optimization focus in v4. Only fraction of our users post here. In fact, many of the biggest powerusers simply do not have time to post here.

Just on the 'expected with every release' perhaps my wording was off. I meant its something that really doesnt need voting for because realistically its something im sure you and we all want. I didnt mean for it to sound like we didnt find it useful. Just it doesnt seem to be that useful in terms of a voting option. Who doesnt want it faster? :)Again the work you, Ondra, and your team has done has for me made it much more fun to work in 3d again and i cant thank you guys enough. Ive converted so many people to corona over the years and im not likely going to stop!

Ondra, I think there's a miscommunication and a disconnect between the developers and the users.

I believe the users are questioning the usefulness of the developement of features in versions 2 and 3, and they are suggesting that the efforts of your team didn't go to the right place, and that as a result some of the really useful features were released incomplete.

Being transparent:

Corona 2:1-PhoenixFD (Did the user base really ask for this?)2- OpenVDB and CoronaVolumeGrid (Did the user base really ask for this?)(I can't use it without a VDB file)3-3D Volume Materials (Not usable as global atmospherics in my opinion. I can expand if necessary)4-Compatibility with vray (Did the user base really ask for this?)5-Bokeh, Center bias and vignetting (nice to have, did the user base really ask for this?)6-Material Library (Did the user base really ask for this?)7-Corona toolbar (I can't imagine this being a big task, with all due respect)

Corona 3:1-IR feedback improvements (Honestly don't notice a difference)2-Nvidia denoising (excellent!)3-Improved displacement (as others mentioned it's not ideal the way it works. In the video it's shown as if it works amazing, but it was used in a particularly easy case -large separation between stones, and surface detail. In real archviz cases at least I didn't get good results with setting at 3, 4 or 5 pixels)4-Multimap (What's wrong with the free multitexture map?)5-New united lister (How long did this take really? It seems to be incomplete too, no cameras or proxies for example)

Edit: And most of all, users are voicing their opinion so Corona focuses efforts in the future Edit 2: OR to make sure they understand where corona wants to go so they can make an informed desicion to whether they stay with corona or not and what hardware they need to get if they decide not to.

Just on the 'expected with every release' perhaps my wording was off. I meant its something that really doesnt need voting for because realistically its something im sure you and we all want. I didnt mean for it to sound like we didnt find it useful. Just it doesnt seem to be that useful in terms of a voting option. Who doesnt want it faster? :)Again the work you, Ondra, and your team has done has for me made it much more fun to work in 3d again and i cant thank you guys enough. Ive converted so many people to corona over the years and im not likely going to stop!

yes, it is something everyone wants... but it still takes time to implement, so the question, how much exactly do you want it? Would you be happy with speed improvements at cost of dropping 1 potential big feature? 2 big features? 3? ;) Same with memory optimizations...

Personally I'd like to see standards like aces and pbr implemented sooner rather than later but that's just my opinion as you said. But with those being high on the poll I'd guess alot of others feel the same too

Edit: I completely understand it takes time to optimise and I hope you and Tom and the rest of the team in turn aren't seeing this as any sort of attack on your skills or anything. For me its more about understanding the teams priorities because currently there is no reliable indicator.

Also lupaz not all dev is user driven. There's likely alot more at play.But it is somewhat disappointing when something that is on a user poll and the trello gets pushed back but its beyond anyone's control.

I always thought that speed comes (partially) also with leaner code. Personally Corona is fast enough for me. On the other hand I'm under an impression that there is some kind of consensus that there is a lot of room for improvement on the field of tone mapping etc.

Apart from memory optimizations is this being considered as "the big feature" for the upcoming release ?

Of course everyone will say yes to the question "do you want to render faster?"But how fast can Corona get by just improving the code? I can't imagine the difference being significant to match a GPU render engine and a couple of GPUs.I'd think Corona is at the mercy of CPU development, and I think the user base knows this and it's ok with it.

And I'd say the same with RAM. Get more RAM if you need it. But we can't get a better BRDF elsewhere and plug it in to Corona.

Of course everyone will say yes to the question "do you want to render faster?"But how fast can Corona get by just improving the code? I can't imagine the difference being significant to match a GPU render engine and a couple of GPUs.I'd think Corona is at the mercy of CPU development, and I think the user base knows this and it's ok with it.

And I'd say the same with RAM. Get more RAM if you need it. But we can't get a better BRDF elsewhere and plug it in to Corona.

Of course everyone will say yes to the question "do you want to render faster?"But how fast can Corona get by just improving the code? I can't imagine the difference being significant to match a GPU render engine and a couple of GPUs.I'd think Corona is at the mercy of CPU development, and I think the user base knows this and it's ok with it.

And I'd say the same with RAM. Get more RAM if you need it. But we can't get a better BRDF elsewhere and plug it in to Corona.

Pretty sure siger has a brdf shader as dub at did some tests with it

Thanks. It was just an example.Edit: Are you sure it's a BRDF or is it maps?

First of all, I am pretty sure nobody wanted to hurt or offend you guys, including myself as well.I had/have an opinion what I've shared. It looks like for the majority of your customers different things in the engine are (more) important. Noted.

Sorry, I am not going to play with the quote feature I just want to reflect on some things.

...there was an opinion here that the NVIDIA Denoiser was really nothing major, just something generic.

It was me ofcourse and after all I apologize a little bit about that. It wasn't completely nice to say like that and I didn't exactly meant like that. As I said I like that feature, its a game changer, thats why I'll renew my subsciption as well. I was dissapointed a little bit, becuse I expected something more besides that as well. It's not needed to tell me again, I understand.

You can't please all of the people all of the time, as the saying goes :)

It's true, and true. We only would like to see a little bit more exact things, or more accurate things in the development roadmap it that is possible. There was a missunderstanding here, (some) people (including me) took the development roadmap more seriously than we should have had to. Now we know those are not exact things, just planned possible things.

but I every time I deleted my post because it was too impolite.

If I was impolite I apologize again. We are just talking not arguing. Nobody accuse anybody with anything.

most people want better performance in huge scenes (RAM, startup and shutdown times)

I would love to see/have those. We work on large scenes as well.

Only fraction of our users post here. In fact, many of the biggest powerusers simply do not have time to post here.

OK, It's a little bit hard to understand what you meant by that. I mean, I understand a little bit, but let me not reflect on that.

Corona is definitely a large company now. I am not talking about the number of people who work there I am talking about how they see the world businesswise.You know what, I understand that one as well. they want to keep an eye on the companies future, I would do the same what they did/do.

Everybody needs to understand that, it's not the same company what it was a couple of years ago. I am not saying it becomes better or worst, it just becomes a real company.The merging with Chaos Group, the focusing more on money what big sharks want made some people dissapointed. Nobody blames you guys. Every company has to make that decision who wants to grow above a certain level.

We love Corona, we love the family, some people just started to feel that the other family members not listening with full focus anymore. 4-5 (who knows) years ago every opinion was important but it can't be like that anymore because there are thousands of opinions out there. Understood.

We are archviz guys, you need to understand that. Ofcourse we ask for those things what we would need or love to see in the next releases. If the company focusing more on different areas, (maybe because they want to break into other parts of the industry as well) we understand that as well, companywise, but we not celebreate that.

I didn't even want to write this comment, not because I am dissapointed or mad with anybody. I didn't want to do it because I think I understand your point. I am not a company owner ofcourse but I've managed to live the past 40 years on this world and I try to keep my eyes and my mind open as much as I can. That doesn't mean I am right or wrong. Some people will think I am right (in a few things) the others will think I am the stupidest person who ever lived. That is completely fine.

As an end note:We are all looking forward to the next releases. You guys do your best, we will try to do the same as well.

I forgot to mention something and I think thats the real point of this whole thing.We are artist, we have different needs. Large companies (those are the important clients, thats understandable, I buy 1 licence, they buy 1000 licences) want more speed, less RAM usage. The quality of the corona renders are already superb, ofcourse they want to speed up their renders to make money more quicker with a less expensive render farm.

We - artists - on the other side prefer those "special" things (as well), what makes that f* vase on that table more photorealistic. :)

Of course everyone will say yes to the question "do you want to render faster?"But how fast can Corona get by just improving the code? I can't imagine the difference being significant to match a GPU render engine and a couple of GPUs.I'd think Corona is at the mercy of CPU development, and I think the user base knows this and it's ok with it.

And I'd say the same with RAM. Get more RAM if you need it. But we can't get a better BRDF elsewhere and plug it in to Corona.

Pretty sure siger has a brdf shader as dub at did some tests with it

Thanks. It was just an example.Edit: Are you sure it's a BRDF or is it maps?